Historic and Modern Utilities
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Slide 1 Historic and Modern Utilities Lighting and Electrical Systems Slide 2 American Home Utilities • 1800 — With few exceptions, American homes were hardly technologically distinguishable from post-medieval homes – Cooking: open hearth – Heating: fireplaces – Cooling: open the doors and windows – Food storage: (relatively) cold/root cellar – Lighting: candles, oil lamps – Washing/bathing: basins, tubs – Waste: outhouse during the day, chamber pot (stored under the bed) at night Slide 3 American Home Utilities, cont. • 1900 — Most homes contained modern conveniences unrecognizable to an 1800 homeowner – Cooking: kitchen range (electric or gas) – Heating: steam/hot water, or central forced air – Cooling: electric fans – Food storage: ice box – Lighting: electric or gas – Washing/bathing/waste: bathtubs, sinks, and toilets connected to water and sewage systems Slide 4 “Modern Conveniences” Was not until the development of mass • 1800s — century of enormous progress production, spurred by the Civil War, • 1805, B. Latrobe, modern = “comfort” that new technologies became • 1860 huge strides; new technologies only available to the wealthy available to the middle class – 1860s, # industrial firms in US increased by 80%, the largest one-decade increase in Getting water from a pump in the yard American history beats a well and a bucket. But locating • Technological changes not uniform in time or degree, but even incremental changes were the pump inside the house, along with significant a sink, is an even greater improvement. • Technologies interdependent Widespread acceptance of new technologies dependent on the creation and evolution of other technologies. A flush toilet of little use if there was a water supply, but no adequate sewerage system through which to remove the waste. Slide 5 “Modern Conveniences”, cont. Gibson, Louis H. Convenient Houses, • 1889 definition of “modern conveniences”: with Fifty Plans for the “those arrangements and appliances which make it possible for people to live Housekeeper. New York: Thomas Y. comfortably in a larger house, without Crowell, 1889. seriously increasing the cares which they had in a smaller one.” • Home built in 1900 recognizably modern • 1920s post-WWI building boom – Jan. 1926 House & Garden, “comfort had been brought up to perfection” Slide 6 Ierley, p. 11 Slide 7 3 and 8. Middletown is Muncie, IN. 4. Major cities include NY, Philadelphia, “Middletown” = Muncie, IN Chicago, and Baltimore. Seventh “Major cities” = New York, Special Report of the Commissioner of Philadelphia, Chicago, & Labor, WA, DC, 1894. Water closets Baltimore were replacing privies in areas of concentrated population, but most, if not all, of these water closets were shared. 9. US Dept. of Commerce, Real Property Inventory 1934. Merritt Ierley, The Comforts of Home: The American House and the Evolution of Modern Convenience (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999), p. 10. Slide 8 Lighting Whale oil lamp, Argand lamp, solar or • Until about 130 years ago, all lighting was open astral lamp — could burn oil or lard, flame: fire, rush, candle, oil, lard, gas converted so would burn kerosene Tallow — solidified fat of cattle or sheep Spermaceti (1830s) — liquid wax from the head of the sperm whale converted to a solid Stearine (1850s) — chemically purified animal or vegetable fat Paraffin (1860s) — byproduct of the petroleum industry Slide 9 Petroleum-based fuels for lighting Simplest form of paraffin is methane, CH4, which is a gas at room • Kerosene invented 1846 by Canadian Abraham Gesner (distilled oily coal at low temperature, but temperature. Heavier members of the later used petroleum) • Paraffin oil (= kerosene), 1848, family are liquid at room temperature; James Young, Scotland, distilled paraffin oil from coal e.g., octane (C8H18), mineral oil, and • First U.S. oil well drilled in 1859 paraffin wax (C20H42 to C40H82), near Titusville, PA by E. L. Drake. Produced abundant supply of isolated in 1830 by Carl Reichenbach, kerosene Kerosene Lamp,1957 and is a solid at room temperature. Paraffin wax is a white, odorless, tasteless, waxy solid, with a typical melting point between 115-154 degrees F. Paraffin wax is used in crayons, and in modified drywall, where the paraffin wax melts during the day absorbing heat, and solidifying at night, releasing heat. http://www.douglashistory.org.au/filea dmin/_migrated/pics/Woman_reading_ magazine_by_light_of_kerosene_lamp_ Port_Douglas_1957_01.jpg Slide 10 Manufactured Gas The coal was gasified by heating the • Coal gas manufactured in the 1600s coal in enclosed ovens with an oxygen- • Coal gasified by heating it in enclosed oven with little oxygen poor atmosphere. Gases, including • Gas produced is a mixture of hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, • Coal gas also contains significant quantities of and ethylene, were generated, all of sulfur, ammonia • Coal gas has to be purified before used which can be burnt for heating and • Constant fuel supply, smelly, very hot lighting purposes. Coal gas, however, • Aka “town gas”, “illumination gas” also contains significant quantities of sulfur and ammonia compounds, as well as heavy hydrocarbons, and so the gas needed to be purified before it could be used. Town gas, a synthetically produced mixture of methane and other gases, mainly the highly toxic carbon monoxide, is used in a similar way to natural gas and can be produced by treating coal chemically. This is a historical technology, not usually economically competitive with other sources of fuel gas today. But there are still some specific cases where it is the best option and it may be so into the future. Most town "gashouses" located in the eastern US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were simple by- product coke ovens which heated bituminous coal in air-tight chambers. The gas driven off from the coal was collected and distributed through networks of pipes to residences and other buildings where it was used for cooking and lighting. (Gas heating did not come into widespread use until the last half of the 20th century.) The coal tar (or asphalt) that collected in the bottoms of the gashouse ovens was often used for roofing and other water- proofing purposes, and when mixed with sand and gravel was used for paving streets. Slide 11 Worker shoveling coal at a gasworks Slide 12 Concord Gas Light Co, In service from 1888-1952, is the last Concord, NH, 1888-1952 structure of its kind in the U.S. still containing its original gasholder. Similar structures were a common feature in the urban areas of New England and upper New York. This one was built to increase the company's storage capacity and was retired when a natural gas pipeline reached Concord. General view of site looking NW, Concord Gas Light Company, Gasholder House, South Main Street, Concord, Merrimack County, NH http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/n h/nh0100/nh0131/photos/105471pv.jp g Slide 13 Manufactured Gas Lighting • 1790s demonstrations of illuminating gas • 1807 gas street lighting system in London • 1816—first gas system for street lighting in the U.S. in Baltimore; New York’s gas street lights installed in 1823 • By start of Civil War, 381 cities had some kind of gas light system, running on “town gas” • Street lights: made city safer; shops stayed open longer; downtown became an evening entertainment center Slide 14 Photos by L. M. Drummond Slide 15 Atlanta Gas Light Company William Helme, Philadelphia, built first • April 6, 1855—First gasworks gasworks in Atlanta in 1855. (coal-burning gas plant) begun • Dec. 25, 1855—1st gas streetlight • 1856 –AGL Co. incorporated—Atlanta’s oldest corp. • 1864—Gasworks burned by Union Army • 1880—All city’s gas streetlights back on • 1883—Atlanta had 426 gas streetlights • 1889—Gas water heating introduced • 1890s—Gas cook stoves introduced • 1902—Anthracite coal strike made gas cooking popular; became more profitable than gas lighting had ever been Slide 16 Atlanta Gas Light Company 1871 Bird’s Eye Map Slide 17 Standard Gas Philadelphia gasworks; Ierley, p. 138;. Machine, ca. 1892 Home production of “illuminating gas” was Standard Gas Machine, ca. 1892, Ierley, only for the wealthy p. 140. Philadelphia Gasworks; engraving from Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1853 Slide 18 Gas Production Interstate Power Company • Gas-producing (“gasification”) plants were manufactured gas plant in 1930s, located in remote, industrial sectors of towns because of the smell Clinton IA, serving eastern Iowa and • Gas had to be scrubbed (filtered) to get rid southern Minnesota. of odors and noxious byproducts (ammonia, tar, sulfur gas) http://www.engg.ksu.edu/CHSR/outrea • Usually the gas works was located at a low ch/tosc/sites/clintonimages.html elevation relative to the rest of the city because gas is naturally lighter than air and The Center for Hazardous Substance would rise through the mains Research, Kansas State University Cleanup and revitalization of these brownfield sites Slide 19 Gas lighting was superior to anything that The Manufactured Gas Industry in preceded it, and it was a way to demonstrate that a city was up-to-date Kansas, by the Kansas Dept. of Health and Education, 2008 Slide 20 Naturally Occurring Gas Natural gas is a naturally occurring • ca. 1000 B.C.—Oracle of Delphi, Mt. Parnassus, hydrocarbon gas mixture consisting Greece; natural gas escaping from cracks in ground, ignited by lightning primarily of methane, with other • Chinese 1st to use naturally occurring gas—bamboo pipelines hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, • 1626—Native Americans lit natural gases, Lake Erie • 1821—first natural gas well dug in Fredonia, NY and hydrogen sulfide. Before natural • 1858—Fredonia Gas Light Co. formed, 1st in US • 1859—first US oil well also produced natural gas, gas can be used as a fuel, it must piped 5.5 miles to Titusville, PA • 1885—Robert Bunsen invented burner that mixed natural gas with air, creating a flame safe for undergo processing to clean the gas cooking and heating and remove impurities including water to meet the specifications of marketable natural gas.